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Published: October 24th 2009
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Tuesday, Oct 20th
Finally I got sit down and write… We’re in the airport and waiting for our plane to Goa. The past couple days in Mumbai were crazy. We left the ashram on Saturday early morning and got on the train to Mumbai. We’d booked just regular seats, nothing fancy, but lots of fun. Its hard to describe, but I’ll try: Picture tons of people trying to get into one carriage….We got in and even found our seats… Definitely nothing for bigger people. There are families, huge groups of people and everyone’s playing music and talks and is just standing around everywhere. Then there are vendors on the train, selling everything from tea and coffee to key chains and fake jewelry. When the train leaves the station it starts up slowly so people can hop on and off last minute. Even in between the stations there are passages where it goes very slow and people are getting on and off. There was a group of guy sitting in the stall next to us having breakfast. Of course we had to try and they fed us idli (fermented rice rolls) and chutney. It’s very common here to get offered food.
I get the impressions Indians generally take twice as much and give the rest away. It’s awesome.
We arrived in Mumbai and got a taxi to our hotel, which is located right in Colaba, right on top of Café Leopolds (just in case any of you read Shantaram). The room was very basic, but didn’t have bedbugs and cost us only 12 euro for a double, which is expensive for India, but a bargain in Mumbai. Just right after we’ve walked out of our hotel a guy came up to us and asked, whether we wanted to be extras in a big bollywood production. We read and heard about that before, so we just thought ‘why not?’ and said yes. It was supposed to be a night shoot Sunday night.
Then we met up with some girls from the Ashram and went to watch the sunset on Chowpaty beach. We happened to be here right at Diwali, which is the biggest Hindu festival and something like Christmas. So there were tons of families with their kids. They had set up a fair, where the rides were man- driven. We didn’t get on, but it looked like tons of
fun. Afterwords we had our first alcohol in weeks, celebrating our own diwali. Amy and I shared a bottle of red wine - it was outstanding. Really missed red wine.
Sunday we just walked around the city. I’d never pictured Mumbai this pretty, and looking at the buildings, you really notice the English influence. Most of the buildings look like they’ve been taken right out of London. At five o’clock pm we met up to shoot our first movie. We knew that it was supposed to go on until 6 am, so we took books, cause we expected a lot of waiting. The bus took about three hours to get there, cause it was driving all around Mumbai picking up more and more people. Once we got there we got our ‘costumes’. Hideous party dresses. If that’s the picture that Indians have of Europeans… well, I don’t know. There were about 50 other people. It was set at the beach and we didn’t really have to do anything but to cheer and look happy, like we’re having fun, not too hard. The actors that were in that movie were very famous, apparently (I didn’t know anyone, but that might be,
cause I don’t watch Bollywood). It was very interesting to see how everything was set up, with the lighting, the cameras and stuff. It took ages to shoot the shortest scenes and the director was screaming and yelling, totally like you’d imagine it to be. The shoot actually lasted until five am. But we got to meet lots of people, so that was fun. It was a cool experience, but I think once is enough.
So Monday we slept in late and I went off to explore Mumbai by myself. Mumbai is a city of opposites. On one hand you see families sleeping on sidewalks, owning nothing but the few clothes they’re wearing; on the other hand you see pompous houses and super expensive stores for the rich. The city is intense and even though I liked it a lot it’s hard to take and very exhausting. The Mumbaians are very nice and friendly. Everyone wanted to take pictures with Amy and me. So now we’re on tons of pics of random people, mostly looking totally shitty, cause you just sweat all the time, so there is no point of doing your hair or makeup whatsoever. We ate tons
of awesome Indian food, even though we didn’t really know what we were ordering half of the times. Since we decides our stomachs had enough time to adjust by now, we ate a lot out of street stalls, where you get the best food - Yummy. Last night we went to have a drink at Café Leopolds, which is very famous here. We dind’t really like it. It was stuffed with tourists and they actually served beef burgers which is as unindiany as it can get. Definitely not my thing.
I have to get going now, they’ll start boarding our plane, soon!
Hugs!
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karan bhatia
karan bhatia
great going .
well i needed information on the ashram u were staying in